UAF has taken steps to gauge interest from national booksellers to take over operations of its campus bookstore.

An outside company could take over management and operations and pay the university a portion of the profits, freeing the school from day-to-day operations and offering the strong buying power of a national chain, UAF officials said.

"The cost of doing books is going up and up and up and a major vendor has a major advantage over product and delivery services over a self-operating store," said Scot Ebanez, the university director of auxiliary and business services.

No timeline has been set and no decisions have been made. In July, the university sent out a request soliciting information from bookstore management companies.

Two companies, Barnes & Noble College Booksellers and Follett Higher Education Group, responded to the query, Ebanez said.

Barnes & Noble operates more than 500 college bookstores in 44 states, including the bookstore at Harvard University.

Follett operates the bookstore at the University of Notre Dame and about 750 other colleges.

UAF Chancellor Steve Jones said contracting out bookstore operations makes sense.

"We are a university and our core mission is to deal with education," Jones said. "We don't claim to have expertise in running a retail sales operation. It seemed prudent to find ways to take advantage of there being a cadre of firms out there that did this sort of thing for a living."

Money is a driving forces behind the university's interest.

Under university management, the bookstore, which sells mostly textbooks required for university courses, is not making any money, Ebanez said. The bookstore brings in about $3.5 million annually but spends $3.4 million.

"Our hope is that we can, through the private sector, provide better service to our students and generate some income to the university," Jones said.

Not everyone wants to see a national chain move onto campus.

Dave Hollingsworth, owner of Gulliver's Books, said such a move would spell disaster for his store a block away. A large portion of his business, he said, comes from university students and faculty who buy new and used books and to eat in his cafe, he said.

Gulliver's already has been hurt by the Barnes & Noble store in east Fairbanks that opened last year. "And that's from a bookstore halfway across town," he said.

A new national chain in the neighborhood would bracket him in and lure away many of his campus customers, he said.

Hollingsworth does not need to worry about that, said Ro Bailey, UAF vice chancellor for administrative services.

"We're not hiring someone to come in and compete with Gulliver's," Bailey said. "We're hiring someone to do what we already do."

The campus bookstore carries different books than Gulliver's, Bailey said. Students who want novels or other literature will still have to go to another bookstore, she said.

Hollingsworth is not convinced. He does not see what would stop a company such as Barnes & Noble from offering a wide selection of books in a college bookstore.

"I just don't think that the university should go into direct competition with local businesses," Hollingsworth said.